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... an indicator that employment is not provided to all those that seek it in all of rural India. 12 Moreover, when comparing the share of BPL population in a State as share of all persons below the poverty line in India, with the share of MGNREGA workers in the respective State with all MGNREGA workers across India, this shows additional imbalances (see Figure 2). While some States such as Andhra Pradesh 13 or Tamil Nadu host only a small proportion of India's BPL population, they have much higher participation rates. ...
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O objetivo deste artigo é problematizar as mudanças nas perspectivas que informam a proteção social pública, situando as principais tendências no contexto da acumulação flexível. Trata-se de um estudo de caráter bibliográfico, no qual identificamos que três principais justificativas influenciaram a construção na noção de proteção social desde que o...
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... Thus, innovative dimensions of PWPs have emerged with the sole aim of achieving extra goals. Add-on interventions, such as capital infusion, training and mentoring, and behavioral therapy components are being inculcated into PWPs to improve the quality of labor supply and develop programs into more or less permanent initiatives so as to attain social protection goals, e.g., restoring dignity, reducing child labor and gender inequality (Dejardin, 1996;Holmes and Jones, 2011;Rimki, 2012;Ehmke, 2015;Kumar, 2017;Gehrke and Hartwig, 2018;Dinku, 2019;Mission Directorate, 2021) and maintaining social and political stability, particularly in fragile states (Mvukiyehe, 2018). This new image given to PWPs leaves only a thin commonality between all PWPs−they are all poised to (1) minimize persistent poverty through provision of low-wage employment opportunities for the vulnerable poor and at-risk youths, and (2) create or upgrade (repair) community assets e.g., social and economic infrastructure (The World Bank, 2009;Mvukiyehe, 2018). ...
... Thus, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS, hence forth) is one of the largest functional labor guarantee schemes ever recorded in the world (ESID, 2014;Bahal, 2022), which offers 100 days of paid labor in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work (Ministry of Rural Development, 2012;Bhalla, 2014;Gupta and Mukhopadhyay, 2014;Ehmke, 2015;Godfrey-Wood and Flower, 2017;Agrawal, 2019). Later, a directive was issued by Ministry of Rural Development that members of Scheduled Tribe who have received land rights under the Forest Rights Act (2006) should be given extra 50 days of work under the scheme (Business Standard, 2014). ...
Sustainable development is one of the ubiquitous paradigms of this century. Poverty, biodiversity loss and climate change are some of the obstacles to achieving sustainable development. To mitigate these encumbrances, countries have painstakingly adopted various policies and interventions. Public work programs, one of the initiatives targeting the construction of strong social safety nets through redistribution of wealth and generation of meaningful employment are increasingly being launched in developing countries. This paper is an attempt to examine the effects of phased implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) on the rejuvenation and restoration of community forests in India. Searches performed in multidisciplinary electronic databases (Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, PubMed, Emerald Insight, Google Scholar, Taylor and Francis Online, Wiley Online Library, and Springer Link) indicated that MGREGS is one of the largest labor guarantee schemes ever recorded in India and globally, and has holistically contributed to reforestation and afforestation through its land development themes to reduce vulnerability of rural communities to recurrent droughts, floods and improve soil moisture and fertility. It is evident that MGNREGS in synergy with the government forest development programs have the potential to promote social afforestation, reforestation and biodiversity conservation as witnessed in the Sundarbans. These have the potential to empower local people through creation of income generating activities and provision of local forest goods and services. However, the creation of forests as rural assets necessitates that emphasis should be laid on their maintenance so as to ensure that they are given their due importance for sustainable and long-term benefit of the poor rural households. This study highlights the need to perform a comprehensive assessment of forest assets that has been established through MNREGS across states in India.
... "Where the scheme works, where employment is provided regularly and reliably and so is the payment, where the infrastructure built is useful and sustainable, MGNREGA has transformed the lives of rural populations". [4] ...
... 3. For a discussion on the welfare schemes upon which MGNREGA builds see Ehmke (2015). programmes and schemes. ...
... Three additional challenges are the inadequate levels of qualified staff and training, poor maintenance of records, and top-down planning married to bottom-up decision making. These governance issues, however important, are not the main focus of this article and interested readers are directed to Ehmke (2015). ...
... 4. See Ehmke (2012) for a historical review of the expansion of social protection in India. 5. For a short overview of the long political process that led to the MGNREGA legislation, see Ehmke (2015); a detailed discussion can be found in Chopra (2009). ...
The extension of social protection to all has become a central policy objective, both nationally and internationally. A considerable number of middle- and low-income countries have undertaken substantial efforts to extend social protection, while the international community reaffirmed its commitment to the extension of social protection through the adoption of the ILO Recommendation concerning National Floors of Social Protection, No. 202 (2012). This article reviews the legal provisions and the implementation of the Indian Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), legislated in 2005, and does so in the light of the more recent provisions of ILO Recommendation No. 202. Since its introduction ten years ago, MGNREGA has provided a source of income to rural workers, increased wage rates, achieved high female participation rates and created durable assets. India's local governance bodies, Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI), have been empowered and involved in the processes of planning and monitoring. However, despite successes, there have been considerable shortcomings in implementation. This article highlights two central themes: first, the innovative policy framework of the Act, which brings together rights-based entitlements, demand-driven employment, and citizen-centred monitoring. Second, it assesses the accessibility and adequacy of benefits in the implementation of MGNREGA. We conclude that MGNREGA offers potential for South-South learning, both in terms of policy-design and implementation.
Full text available here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/issr.12099/epdf
Here, we bring out the key influences, both shocks and policy changes, that account for the performance of the economy brought out in the earlier chapters. Being an analysis of the dynamics of the short run, the focus is on demand and its determinants. Structural policies and changes are covered to the extent that they have a bearing on the demand. We cover both the financial market side (including the global market) and the goods and services market. The emphasis is on the policy though since the Indian economy being small in relation to the rest of the world, there is always a policy response that is possible to keep growth at high rates, given also its emerging character—the availability of idle and underutilized labor. The fiscal stimulus provided to counteract the GFC was what kept growth rates at a high level of 9% in 2008–09 and 2009–10 and part of 2010–11. The near simultaneous withdrawal of the fiscal stimulus and the monetary contraction (to fight largely a supply-side inflation that was also overestimated), c.2011–12 was the immediate reason for the sharp decline in investment and in output. The problems were compounded by the so-called “policy paralysis” brought about by a spate of bans and governance issues in the telecom and mining sectors. However, the suddenness of the monetary squeeze when the rest of the world was still in a situation of ample liquidity braked investments generally and brought many of the investment projects in infrastructure including PPPs to their knees. Many had built in debilities but not all. The feedback effect from problematic design to a high interest rate regime put pressure on the banking system to which the risks had been shifted. The uncompensated demand reduction due to the success of the GST was an issue. Most initiatives of the Modi Government, despite their potentially very large public and social value, did not have the necessary basis in design, organization, policy and law, and as such had little impact. The fiscal side too was conservative with the large reduction in the MGNREGS allocations, and the underspending vis-à-vis budgets in a period when “animal spirits” were down.
Social protection has the potential to provide a key interface between states and citizens. We consider how the institutional framing and design of social protection can be adapted from top-down forms of provision to forms that stimulate vulnerable citizens to make rights-based claims and demand accountability for their entitlements. A conceptual framework is developed that illustrates three channels through which citizenship can be engaged through social accountability mechanisms and in the context of social protection provision. Drawing on case studies, we highlight the different contexts in which the design and delivery of social protection can open up spaces for different forms of citizenship engagement and expression. Through opening up institutional spaces where citizens can engage with the state, and each other, we conclude that social protection is uniquely placed to build the economic, social and political capabilities of citizens.
The five largest social safety net (SSN) programmes in the world are being implemented in India, China and Brazil. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is one of these programmes and regarded as the world’s largest SSN. MGNREGA aims at enhancing livelihood security of households in rural India by providing guaranteed wage employment. The scheme has resulted in the creation of sustainable assets that promote the economic and infrastructure development. More than 33 million assets were built in the process of MGNREGA. These assets were spread out in 262,380 smallest units of administration covering 6887 sub-districts with the participation of more than 250 million human manpower. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) aims to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. The 17 goals tackle the root cause of poverty and attempts to make a positive change for both people and planet. Ecological regeneration or rejuvenation during the development of the assets generated numerous tangible and intangible benefits to the community in a sustainable way. MGNREGA, a federal government-sponsored scheme, using a decentralized approach is directly or indirectly helping to achieve all the 17 goals of sustainable development in India. This article takes a holistic approach to correlate and map the concepts and outcomes of MGNREGA programme with SDG. This article emphasises the fact that community-based participation in the planning and development activities at the regional levels will yield benefits to the biosphere, society and economy at the national level.
